1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radiator heat-dissipation simulation system using a computer for calculating heat-dissipation capability of a vehicle radiator and displaying the result on a screen of the display device.
2. Description of Background Art
When estimating a heat-dissipation capability of a vehicle radiator having a water-cooled engine mounted thereon, a composite coefficient of heat transfer of a coefficient of heat transfer from cooling water flowing in channels of cooling pipes (metal pipes) which constitute the radiator to inner walls of the metal pipes, a coefficient of heat transfer from the inner wall of the metal pipe to an outer wall of the metal pipe, and a coefficient of heat transfer from the outer wall of the metal pipe to the outside air is taken into consideration. Also, it is necessary to take the flow rate of water into consideration for the coefficient of heat transfer from water to the inner wall of the metal pipe. Furthermore, in addition to the coefficient of the heat transfer of the cooling pipes, the length of the cooling pipes, the number of stages of the cooling pipes which constitute the radiator, and further, the fact that the air velocity or the like affects the cooling capability are taken into consideration to estimate the performance of the radiator.
In other words, the heat-dissipation capability, for example, the amount of heat-dissipation is calculated as a value of a function (estimated value) by an expression using parameters of data on the shape of the radiator and the structure of the cooling pipes as variables.
Accordingly, when estimating the heat-dissipation capability of the vehicle radiator having a water-cooled engine mounted thereon in the related art, the estimated value is obtained by substituting variables in various expressions by manual calculation using a calculator, spreadsheet software, or an expanded function thereof (macro).
A technology to display the contents calculated by a super computer with regard to a simulation analysis of an electric circuit on a graphic display is proposed. However, the technology is not provide a simulation of the heat-dissipation of the vehicle radiator. See, JP-A-60-7550, FIG. 3.
As described above, when estimating the heat-dissipation capability of the vehicle radiator having the water-cooled engine mounted thereon in the related art, there is a problem in that the input operation including the input of numerical values via a keyboard and the reading of the numerical value and the result reading operation are complicated.
Also, since the shape of the radiator is processed simply by entering numerical values of the dimensional data, the shape of the radiator cannot be imaged by intuition. Therefore, there is a problem in that it is quite difficult to know the causal relation between the result of the calculation and the shape by intuition.